Modified Concorde to return to skies for supersonic test

A British Airways Concorde is scheduled to take off today on the first test flight aimed at bringing the supersonic aircraft back into passenger service in September.

The BA planes have been grounded since 15 August last year after an Air France Concorde crashed near Paris, killing all 109 passengers and crew as well as four people on the ground.

Captain Mike Bannister, the airline's chief Concorde pilot, will be at the controls of today's three-hour and 20 minute flight, which will initially follow the plane's normal passenger route to New York.

The aircraft will fly out over the Bristol Channel and begin accelerating to supersonic speed south of Swansea, heading for the south coast of Ireland. West of the Republic, instead of heading for New York, it will turn right, climb to 60,000ft and reach its maximum speed of 1,350mph as it heads towards Iceland. It will then fly to RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, where it will be checked by engineers.

All Concordes have been modified since the disaster near Paris, which happened after a metal object on the runway at Charles de Gaulle airport burst one of the plane's tyres. Parts of the tyre ruptured a fuel tank, causing a fire, immediate loss of height and the crash of the plane. Each of BA's seven Concordes is being fitted with new fuel-tank liners. The wiring in the undercarriage has also been strengthened.

Captain Bannister's co-pilot in what BA describe as a "verification flight" will be Jock Reid, a Civil Aviation Authority test pilot, who will be present on behalf of the plane manufacturer Airbus UK. Both BA and Air France, which has five remaining Concordes, hope to resume passenger Concorde services by early autumn.

Today will be the first time the plane has flown at supersonic speed since last summer. For Concorde enthusiasts the flight heralds the return of the world's most beautiful aircraft; but green activists lament the revival of the "dirty old man of the skies" because of the pollution they say the planecauses.